Monday, May 16, 2016

Manhattan Night: Nocturne for Tabloids

Porter
Wren is a New York City tabloid columnist constantly bemoaning the passing of
his once great profession. It is a rather self-serving pursuit, but somebody
has to do it—and it apparently won’t be readers. Like his colleagues, he is not
inclined to take any responsibility for the decline of old media, but he will eventually
have to own up to all the personal mistakes he is about to make in Brian
DeCubellis’s Manhattan Night (trailer here), which opens this
Friday in New York.

Adapting
Colin Harrison’s New York Times Notable
novel, Manhattan Nocturne, DeCubellis
started the dumbing-down process with the title and presumably kept it going
all the way through. Initially we meet Wren working the late night crime beat.
He tells us people open up to him because he is such a good listener and he
shows it to us by cocking his head like a golden retriever whenever witnesses
talk to him. He made his name and column byline by finding a missing child the
cops had given up on, but he is now in a bit of a rut, albeit a sensitive
muckraking one.

Enter
Caroline Crowley to liven things up. She is the widow of Simon Crowley, an
acclaimed filmmaker who died under mysterious circumstances. The
married-with-children Wren senses this might be the kind of sensational story
that will keep the paper’s new Rupert Murdochian owner Sebastian Hobbs at bay,
but he does not start investigating until Crowley sweetens the deal by seducing
him. However, he quickly discovers this case is more about blackmail than
murder. Evidently, Simon Crowley compulsively shot videotape all around the
City, like an annoying Tarantino character. One of his tapes included something
Hobbs very much wants to keep out of the public eye and he has been regularly
paying someone to keep it so.

That
is all perfectly reasonable as noir set-ups go, but the third act is just a
logical train wreck. We can try to avoid pedantry, but there are just too
if-that-was-X-than-who-did-Y questions to glaze over. Seriously, it makes the
conclusion of The Big Sleep look neat
and tidy, while completely lacking the wit of Bogart and Bacall.

Somehow
as Wren, Adrien Brody manages to look simultaneously morose and smug. At least
Yvonne Strahovski brings all kind of femme fatale heat as Crowley, despite the
film’s constantly vacillating attitude towards her. On the other hand, there is
no getting around the icky awkwardness of her flashbacks scenes with Campbell
Scott hamming it up as the games-playing Simon Crowley. Steven Berkoff (who
played Soviet villains in Octopussy and
Rambo: First Blood Part II) also gets
to play it coolly ruthless and openly revealing as Hobbs. Unfortunately,
Jennifer Beals is completely under-employed as Wren’s not so forgiving wife
Lisa, but she looks smart enough to be a doctor, which is something. What she
is doing with him is anyone’s guess.

Real noir fans could still forgive the plot
holes if there were more humor and attitude to spruce up the film. Yet, DeCubellis’s
screenplay takes itself too seriously, in all the worst ways. It is safe to say
the laughs all come at the wrong spots. Not recommended, Manhattan Night opens this Friday (5/20) in New York, at the AMC
Empire.

About Me

J.B. (Joe Bendel) works in the book publishing industry, and also teaches jazz survey courses at NYU's School of Continuing and Professional Studies. He has written jazz articles for publications which would be appalled by his political affiliation. He also coordinated instrument donations for displaced musicians on a volunteer basis for the Jazz Foundation of America during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Send e-mail to: jb.feedback "at" yahoo "dot" com.